Custom 404 Pro

Apr 22, 2015

Custom 404 Pro is a WordPress plugin that allows users to override the default 404 page with any page from the WordPress Dashboard. You can even redirect users to a different URL everytime you get a 404. It has 8,000+ active installs as of August 2016.

While this may sound trivial to many developers, I built this for people who are less technical and don’t know how to write PHP. It was one of my friends, actually, who gave me the idea as they weren’t able to figure this out.

Global Redirect Settings

These settings apply to all Logs. For example, if you choose the URL option, the plugin will redirect any 404s to the URL you specify. Here is a screenshot of what I had when this Blog was still WordPress.

A couple more options for you to choose from:

None (Do nothing)

WordPress Page (Select an already created Page)

You also get a Log Viewer to see all the 404s that happened on your site. The plugin records the following data for every 404:

User IP Address

404 Path (The invalid URL that resulted in the 404)

User Agent (Browser Type, etc)

Global Settings Type

Date

There is an option to filter the Logs as well. In the screenshot above, you can see the filters being chosen as Internet Explorer, v8.0, Operating System (Windows).

You can also change the Settings for Individual Logs. For example, if the Global Settings say to redirect to a specific URL, you can set a specific 404 or Log to redirect to a specific URL just by editing the Log.

For example, let’s take the following Log and edit it:

Just enter the custom URL in the respective field and everytime a 404 happens on that path, it will redirect to the custom URL and override the Global Settings for this Log.

General Settings

There are some general settings available with the plugin:

Email (sends an email to the Admin on every 404)

Clear Logs (helpful if you have tons of logs)

Logging Status (enabled/disabled)

Error Type (302/301/404)

There have been requests from users to record the 404 as a soft 302 or a 301 redirect. You can set that up here as well.

Download

The plugin is free and you can download it here. Please rate the plugin if you enjoyed using it.

It is also open-sourced which means anyone can contribute. You can find the code on GitHub.